Alexander's Addendum: MidAir Collision
by AbsintheSpoons
Summary: The Mahones are in hiding in Waterloo, Ontario. So are the Franklins. Unbeknownst to Miles and Alex, the women and children become fast friends and set the old enemies on a collision course. R&R.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is my fanfic about the Mahone family, post-season 4. In all likelihood this is not how things are going to go down -- owing mostly to the violent nature of Prison Break's bloodthirsty writers -- but hey, I can dream. Disclaimer: the characters don't belong to me, I'm just screwing with them. R&R, please.

**Mid-Air Collision**

**Chapter** **One**

There were two... no, three customers ahead of Alex in the grocery queue. He had resigned himself to waiting, resorting to the perusal of the tabloids' screaming headlines. Waiting made him restless, made his fingers climb like spiders over every available surface. Made him physically _itch._ He was waiting for the cashier, who was new to the job and could barely navigate the uncharted waters of the cash register. He was waiting for the woman second from the front, who was unloading her groceries onto the conveyor belt with the care and precision usually reserved for applying calligraphy to grains of rice. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he was waiting for Pam.

Alex's wife, Pamela Mahone, had ducked out of the line ten minutes ago to pick up some dry cereal for their son Cameron, Alex's wallet tucked in the back pocket of her jeans. Rice Krispies, Cheerios, Frosted Flakes... doesn't matter, surprise me. But ten minutes is far longer than it should take anyone to choose a box of cereal.

"I guess your wife is missing in action," the man ahead of Alex commented, grinning. The man had a rusty-red beard and an impeccably bald dome. The corners of Alex's mouth tightened in his best imitation of a smile, though the man had managed to combine two of Alex's pet peeves in one off-hand remark: prying behaviour and military analogies.

Lately, Alex had been plagued by nervous thrills of disorientation whenever he looked around and found that Pam wasn't right there beside him. He'd certainly deny it if asked, but now that he'd taken up his role as full-time father and husband, anything else made him feel like a photograph torn in two. Waking from one of his old nightmares, he might grope around in the dark until he found Pam's bare shoulder. On Pam's part, she made sure that her shoulder was always there.

It had been like this – suppressed paranoia and a knee-jerk distrust of strangers – since the Mahone family had decided to flee the country. The Company had long since been reduced to fiery ruins, but it wasn't wise to stick around, in case the wreckage was inclined to violent combustion. Or, dispensing with all metaphors, in case a resentful agent of the conglomerate decided that Alexander Mahone needed silencing.

Still, though. They were in a grocery store. Nothing could happen in a grocery store.

The woman who handled Brussel sprouts like they were delicate china was waved through to make way for the man with the russet beard, who quickly paid for a bag of milk and three boxes of Kraft Dinner. Then it was Alex's turn. Alex, who had no cereal, no wife, and no wallet. Alex, who now faced the embarrassment of having to extract himself from the queue. He mumbled something under his breath about his wallet, his wife, his... cereal, yes.

"Sorry, sorry," he breathed, maneuvering his cart around into the empty grocery lane to the left. _Sorry. _Goddammit, when had he become so polite? There must be something in the Canadian air, that makes a person believe that an apology is the key to all social situations.

"Hey, Buddy!" Ah, a more continental belief: that every male outside of one's personal acquaintance is called 'Buddy'. The voice came from the belligerent youth standing behind him. "Try not to take all day, all right? Some of us have lives, you know!"

Alex turned to face the speaker. The man had a long neck and short, bristly hair, and his polo shirt bore the insignia of a nearby community college. He quailed slightly under the former FBI agent's stare. Some escaped convicts, not currently among the living, might say that he had good reason to quail.

"Some of us do, yes, but clearly you don't fall under the category, considering your... purchases." Alex glanced pointedly at the man's cart, which was nearly empty, save for... "Ibuprofen and feminine hygiene products? Looks like it's your time of the month. Those cramps must be a bitch."

The man's facial expression staggered.

"Oh, yeah?" he managed.

Alex smirked. "Yeah," he said simply, and turned his grocery cart out of the check-out area.

Well, Pam couldn't have lost her way in a ten-aisle grocery store, he knew that much. Alex found her in the cereal aisle, speaking with another woman. Her errand had been thrown off course by the distraction of conversation, and her hand was resting on a shelf, just short of a box of Mini-Wheats. _So close._

Ditching the cart, Alex sidled up to the pair without their noticing his approach and took two boxes down from the shelves.

"Pam," he said quietly, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. She glanced back with a smile, and he returned it weakly. Every time she smiled at him, it was like the day he worked up the nerve to ask her out for the very first time. Every time, it felt as though she had plucked a guitar string in his chest, sending vibrations up and down his spine. "Hah... your chariot awaits?" He gestured to the grocery cart, abandoned at one end of the aisle.

"Have I held up the check-out line?" Pam said innocently. "Look at us, we've been chatting like old friends for hours," she added to the woman. "Leslie, this is my husband."

Turning his attention on his wife's new friend, Alex reached around Pam to shake the woman's hand.

"Alex...," he started by way of introduction, grasping the woman's hand in his. She had light brown skin and shoulder-length brown hair, and a dimpled, heart-shaped face. Striking, really. Her whole face distorted into a smile as she beamed at him expectantly. A tiny flame of recognition flared in the back of his mind. This woman was unmistakably familiar. How had he known her, and when?

"Alex Oakes," Pam finished smoothly. She caught the look of consternation her husband was giving "Leslie", and filed a due remark for later on. "I've just been telling Leslie here that I'm having trouble getting the school board here to enroll Cam in elementary school. Sorry, what was your last name, Leslie?"

"Campbell. I'm Leslie Campbell," the woman answered with an obliging smile.

"No, you're not," Alex blurted. He knew where he'd seen her before. Flipping through a fugitive's file, he'd seen that same face staring up at him from a picture, blurry and splotchy because it had been blown up to three times its original size, but still recognizable. What was Franklin's wife's name? Kacee, that was it. Not Leslie Campbell.

"_And if you don't, I will have Kacee arrested again..."_

Kacee Franklin.

"_... I swear to God, I will ruin their lives..."_

"I'm not Leslie Campbell?" Kacee, or Leslie, or whomever she was, laughed. "My bad. Who am I, then?"

Alex held her gaze a moment longer. Was he looking too hard for it, or did she look nervous, sweating under the interrogatory spotlight? He then attempted to smile disarmingly.

"No, I mean about Cam," Alex said, swallowing. A desperate save. "He's making more fuss about starting at a new school than the school board ever has. He's worried that he will have trouble making new friends." Alex let small talk spill from his lips as his mind raced. "He's a quiet boy, always has been."

"Sounds like my daughter," the woman said. Did she sound relieved? "She's shy, very shy. Though I think she's improved since we – since we moved here."

"You moved here, recently? From where?" asked Pam, curious.

Alex wasn't listening. What were the chances of two principle players from the Fox River Eight manhunt turning up in the same country, same neighbourhood, same _grocery store_... entirely by coincidence? Slim to nil. No, this was an orchestrated conjunction, and yet Alex was completely sure that Kacee hadn't recognized him. Not only had they never met face-to-face before – Alex had only ever seen her face in the newspapers and in Franklin's file – but he had learned in his line of work to read people, and there was no hint of recognition in her expression. No _fear,_ which would be an appropriate reaction, all things considered.

Then... oh. Oh, damn her. _Lang._

Ever since Alexander's disastrous court appearance in Panama, Agent Felicia Lang had grown too cocksure for her own good, every day treating Alex less and less like her superior and more like a... friend. Except that in Felicia's eyes, a friend was someone whom you could trick into helping you move. A Tom Sawyer sort of friend, in short.

_Christ,_ thought Mahone, his anger rising. Lang had sent him and his family up here to... to what, make friends? With the family whose lives he had threatened to destroy? Oh, boy. What a treat.

"Greece! That's incredible. What were you –"

"Pam," Alex interrupted, his voice clipped and impatient. "Let's not keep Leslie here from completing her grocery shopping. Remember, Cam is waiting to be picked up from the babysitter's." He put a slight stress on the word _Leslie_, watching for any signs of discomfort. "So if you've exchanged phone numbers and astrological signs or whatever it is that you do, we really should be going."

Pam took his advice literally and scribbled her cell number on a scrap piece of paper, which the woman promptly tucked into her jean pocket.

"He must like you, Leslie," Pam said conspiratorially. "Normally he would have said something much more colourful."

As they parted ways with Leslie Campbell, Alex slid his hand into his pocket to wrap his fingers around his cellphone. He took it out, flipped it open and dialed a number familiar to his thumbs. The harsh, tinny ring sounded, and his footsteps carried him farther from that face that had stirred up a cloud of faint, unpleasant memories...

And he felt his confidence seeping away. Was he _positive_ that it was the same girl? After all, he had always had difficulty telling Kacee Franklin and Maricruz Delgado apart; who was to say that this wasn't another dead-ringer? The evidence against this woman being Kacee piled up: he'd only ever seen Ms. Franklin in blurry, unflattering pictures in newsprint and technicolor pixels. Also, if the escaped convict had displayed any competence while on the run from someone who had threatened his family, he surely would have made certain that his wife and child would be able to recognize that threat.

He hung up before the call could go through.

"Who was that?" Pam cut in on his thoughts, watching Alex's cellphone slide back into the pocket of his pants. She was a naturally suspicious woman, Alex knew. She had to be, or she would have lost her grip on her husband long ago. As such, she had refused to run off with her college sweetheart without answers.

And answers she had received. All of them – well, nearly. She knew the highlights. She knew, for example, that the man she was currently arm-in-arm with had committed a handful of cold-blooded murders. She knew about the death of the serial killer and rapist, and the ruthless mob boss who had been gunned down when he had a raised a weapon to fire on a federal agent. At the same time, she knew about the mentally fragile man whose dream it had been to sail to Holland on a raft, plummeting to his death; and she knew about the boy whose only crime had been the theft of a baseball card. She didn't accept his word that most of those acts had been in the name of defending her and their son from harm. That didn't balance out. But she did know that she loved him, helplessly, all the same.

"Nobody." Pause. "Lang," he admitted.

They had paid for the groceries, had passed through the automatic doors, were walking through the parking lot. A pimply boy in a gaudy baseball cap was trailing them with their groceries, three bags on each arm.

"Lang... Felicia Lang, you mean? Your old FBI colleague?" Pam asked, and Alex nodded. Pam fell silent for a moment as she unlocked the trunk for the boy carrying the groceries.

"I noticed the look you gave poor Leslie," Pam berated her husband playfully. "Do I need to worry about wandering eyes?"

Alex wrapped his arm around Pam's shoulder and planted a kiss on her hairline.

"Never."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** As usual, these characters don't belong to me. If they did, people like Lang, Alex, Sullins and Pam would get a lot more screentime.

**Chapter Two**

The dense mound of paper was three feet tall and just as wide, and was threatening to fall off the desk where it was perched and create a devastating avalanche over the tiled floor. From beneath all this compounded literature came the pitiful whine of a cellphone on vibrate, struggling to free itself like some acrimonious insect.

Agent Richard Sullins plunged his hand into the pile and resurfaced with the sputtering phone in his grasp. He glanced at the caller ID: one _Andrew Oakes_, nobody he knew.

"La... eh, Felicia. Phone," he grunted, handing it off to Felicia Lang's outstretched hand.

Lang grinned as she accepted the phone. The terms of a truce: she wouldn't call him 'Dick' – a nickname she'd picked up from Alex and a surefire way of getting under Richard's skin – if he obliged in calling her 'Felicia'. She was trying to get the ornery agent to loosen up a little, and... well, baby steps, right?

She set down a box of papers and pinned the cellphone between her shoulder and her ear.

"Hello? Uh, Mr. Oakes?" Lang said, watching carefully as Sullins retreated into Wheeler's old office. It had once been Mahone's office, but Adam Wheeler had taken over once the news got out that Alex was incarcerated in Panama.

She listened for the familiar sound of Alexander Mahone's voice on the other end of the call, but it didn't come. No answer.

Lang tossed the cellphone into the cardboard box with the rest of her assorted belongings. With each of the Fox River Eight either dead or beyond United States borders, the task force assigned to their capture was finally clearing out headquarters. All the desks were emptied, all the personal effects packed away, all the tiny holes in Agent Mahone's wall painted over. Lang was the last to clear out. She looked around at the room, disturbed by how empty it seemed; the stillness was jarring, all the busy clamour of rapid-fire conversation and ringing telephones silenced. This unit had been her big break. Now she was onward and upwards to Internal Affairs with a flattering word from Agent Sullins. He had even taken a break from being a total hard-ass to help her move out.

Said hard-ass emerged from Wheeler's office carrying a small brown package.

"Who's Andrew Oakes? New boyfriend?" he asked with a half-hearted stab at social curiosity. Lang looked around at him, amused, knowing he didn't really give a damn who Andrew Oakes was, though by all rights he should. If he ever knew that Alex had escaped from that Panamanian dump, he would sic the Mounties on Alex's ass or, barring that, book it up there himself to arrest the former special agent. Never mind the fact that the Mahone family was no longer within federal jurisdiction.

Richard abandoned his pitiful attempt at conversation and brandished the brown parcel in his hands. "This was left in one of the drawers of Agent Wheeler's desk. FedEx delivery. Have you seen him?"

Lang shook her head. "No. Hasn't he already cleared out?" Adam Wheeler had also been offered a position in Internal Affairs. His refusal to accept the position had surprised Felicia; in her opinion, he fit the job far more than she did. He might as well have been working for the IA for the entire month leading up to Alex's arrest in Panama, as he had continually passed on information regarding the movements of their unpredictable boss. On her part, Felicia had never been unduly bothered by the fact that the Fox River Eight seemed to be dropping like flies.

Sullins made a noise of agreement and dropped the parcel on top of Lang's belongings.

These days, each call Lang received on her personal line could be filtered into one of three categories: calls from her mom inquiring about her stalled love-life, nagging requests for cash from her useless brother, and miscellaneous calls from Alex. As such, she was enormously grateful for Richard's dependable disinterest.

_Andrew Oakes_ was the name at the top of each of the personal identification papers Lang had given Alex when they had last met. She was first contacted by her former boss shortly after she heard through the grapevine that Mahone had tagged along with Michael Scofield on his latest prison escape. Felicia had needed little persuasion to arrange new identities for him and his family. After observing the extensive process of creating a new identity for a protected witness at her new IA position, it was a simple matter to paint the idyllic portrait of Andrew Oakes, a highschool math teacher, and his wife Charlotte Oakes, an interior designer, who lived in suburban Waterloo, Ontario with their six-year-old son Cameron Oakes. Square house indistinguishable from its neighbour, white picket fence, barbecue and patio set in the backyard. And, of course, a birdbath. For the birds.

Or at least, that had been the idea. Pam had instantly taken to her new profession, which gave her the chance to explore her natural gift for interior designing; Alex, however, had barely been working at the local highschool for a week before he quit, citing the overwhelming idiocy of teenagers. Following her husband's lead of inflexibility, Pam had objected to their new names, Charlotte and Andrew. She claimed the need for new identities was overestimated and needlessly melodramatic.

She didn't object to their new last name (it had been Pam's suggestion, as it was her maiden name) so they quickly fell into the identities of Alex, Pam and Cameron Oakes.

Lang wondered what Alex had wanted; perhaps he'd finally realized that that his new home was literally a couple of blocks down from where the Franklins had set up camp. The situation owed itself to her own manipulation, and she was the only one who held all the puzzle pieces -- not only the knowledge of where former fugitive Benjamin Miles Franklin was in hiding, but also the exclusive information regarding the location of ex-FBI golden boy Alexander Mahone. It gave her a puckish thrill to be playing God with such volatile ingredients. She told herself that's what it was – a mischievous trick – but part of her also felt bad about the way things had fallen out between Alex Mahone and Miles Franklin. If she tilted her head and squinted, they were eerily similar in some respects. Both men were intense personalities, capable of frightening rage one moment and tenderness the next; they were family men with military pasts, both forced by circumstance to do things they'd quickly regretted.

"Richard," Lang blurted. Her fellow agent looked up from a log of Maricruz Delgado's recent phone calls, a scowl gracing his hawk-like face. Lang continued as if she hadn't noticed. "Have you heard from the Franklins recently? Last I heard, Benjamin Miles was having some sort of problem with a tourist...?"

She trailed off carefully. It wasn't, of course, the last she'd heard from the Franklins. She was quite well-informed in that respect. Felicia could tell from the dogged look on Sullins' face that she'd pulled the right lever; the matter of the Franklins' witness protection was a particularly sticky can of worms, and therefore one of Richard's favourite topics of one-sided discussion.

"Have I heard from them," Richard repeated, his voice a rueful moan. "Oh, only every day. Only every time Franklin can get his hands on a telephone. Woke me up at four in the morning last week to tell me that some guy at a strip mall looked at him funny. Paranoid pain in the ass," he added under his breath, shaking his head.

Lang could only nod sympathetically. She was afraid that if she spoke, she wouldn't be able to contain the grin that was tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"I must have told you... after moving them to Greece, I pulled their protection," Richard continued. It wouldn't matter now if Lang was listening or not. He was on a roll. "As soon as we got back from Panama. You can see my reasoning: Mahone's stuck in that anarchistic hell-hole, and he's not going anywhere so long as he's not able to string two sentences together coherently. Not exactly a threat to the Franklin family, in or out of prison. I can't figure what could have happened to the bastard."

Richard sat down at a desk in the middle of the room, an uncertain frown knotting his brow. Lang understood his confusion; it had been jarring to see her former boss, once so powerful and commanding, crumble into a sparking pile of frayed nerves.

Lang looked over and spotted Richard rub his wrist vaguely, and knew that he was recalling the disastrous testimonial hearing in Panama, when Alex had unconsciously begun to scratch viciously at the insides of his wrists. "And the tourist?" she prompted, anxious to get Sullins off the subject of his old rival.

He started at her interruption and plunged his hands into his pockets. "As you say, that damn tourist. It was a one-in-a-million coincidence, honestly." Lang filled in the gaps herself, since Richard seemed unwilling to reiterate: a month or two into the Franklins' stay in Greece, a hawk-eyed American vacationing in Athens had recognized Franklin from the old wanted posters. The man hadn't believed his own eyes, so (and this is where the story gets ridiculous) he had _approached Franklin_ to mention that, hey! You look an awful lot like one of those Fox River Eight guys back in the States. _Smart guy, _Lang thought to herself. "So Franklin calls me up to get his family moved again, and what am I supposed to say? We don't have unlimited resources, we can't afford to finance a whole new life for his family over the suspicion of some hyper-vigilant schmuck. Especially since their protection had already been pulled.

"But, I dunno, I don't think Greece agreed with Franklin. Guy spent the bulk of his life back and forth between Chicago and Iraq, it's bound to be a culture shock. He told me if we wouldn't help, he'd relocate without our assistance. So he's in Canada now. Ontario."

"Good choice," Lang commented, as if this was all news to her.

"That's what I said. The great thing... well, the thing about Canadians is that for the most part, American hysteria rolls right off of them. I'm sure they hear about the Fox River Eight up there, because for months our media wouldn't shut up about it, but the Canadians, a story like that doesn't get their shields up. They didn't memorize the faces in the newspapers, they didn't stick the posters to their refrigerators so that they'd be reminded of a pedophile on the loose every time they wanted a glass of O.J. Even an infamous mug like Franklin's would never be recognized up there. But the man won't stop calling."

Sullins stood up and straightened the chair he had been sitting in. Taking his cue, Lang bent down to pick up one of the boxes filled with her belongings. She handed Wheeler's parcel to Richard.

"So, if you've pulled the Franklins' protection, have they gone back to their old identities, or how does that work?" Lang asked, pushing the door open with a free elbow. This was the most she'd ever heard Richard speak before, and she reflected that, like her, he was only ever comfortable in conversation when the subject at hand was connected to work.

"Well, not entirely. I've tried to convince Benjamin that it's perfectly safe to begin the transition back to their old names. He's going by 'Miles', now, I think. The wife is hanging on to her new name."

He passed by her into the hall and headed down the stairs. Lang paused in the doorway, then ducked back into the field office, feeling that she'd left something behind.

It was just that old feeling of having forgotten something, and it would probably bug her for the rest of the day. Every desk was bare, every drawer was empty, the floor was swept clean. There wasn't even a scrap of paper clinging to the walls. The only trace of the Fox River Eight manhunt was a single crumpled coffee cup in the wastebasket, and an infestation of tiny tack holes in the walls.

--

Sorry, it looks like I'm going to discontinue this fic. (POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD) The evidence is piling up that Pam & Cam aren't long for this world (or rather, the PB world), and I've kind of gotten too down about it to continue writing this fic. If it turns out that they don't die, well... I'll be in university, working my ass off for a nigh unattainable degree, with no time for recreational writing, so it's all the same. Hope you enjoyed this story -- or at least the beginning of it.


End file.
